I'm noticing that Steam is updating my games at a painfully slow average of 80MB/s, even though my SSD's read/write speeds hit over 9000MB/s according to Samsung Magician. For example, a simple 3GB patch can take an hour to install, which is frustrating. My setup is Windows 11 25H2, and I have two SSDs: the one Steam is using for downloads is a slower SATA SSD, while my games are installed on a faster NVMe SSD. I found out that Steam was using my E drive for patching, which isn't as quick. I recently made my boot drive the primary, and now it seems like it's mostly using the D drive for downloads, but it still feels slow. What else can I do to speed this up?
3 Answers
Have you checked your CPU usage while updates are running? It’s possible that your CPU is the bottleneck here, especially since it has to decompress the data being downloaded. If your CPU usage spikes during an update, it might be struggling to keep up.
It sounds like your SSD might be holding you back. The model you've mentioned is a QVO type, which often lacks a dedicated DRAM cache. When you download a game and it decompresses, that could write more data than it can handle at a steady rate. If you can, consider getting an SSD with dedicated DRAM to avoid these slowdowns, especially during heavy write operations like Steam updates.
Is there any way to change which drive Steam uses for downloading patches?
I think you can set the Steam library folder to a different drive in Steam settings, which might help!
Just a heads up, random write speeds are often different from the advertised speeds. If you're seeing a performance drop, it might be a limitation of those budget SSDs you have. Make sure you're aware of the limitations they can have, especially in high-load situations like game updates.
Yeah, I got it for a good price, but it might not be the best choice for heavy usage. I've been feeling the pain!
In my case, the CPU wasn't really getting over 15% usage during updates.